When I was Research Archivist- Bibliographer at the Oriental Institute (1983-2005) I began, in a vague and undirected way, to collect scans of bookplates of scholars of ancient Near Eastern Studies. The primary focus was on those which appeared in volumes in the collections of the Oriental Institute. When the OI History blog began in the winter of 2008, it seemed an appropriate place to illustrate this small collection. When that blog entry appeared, correspondents began to send me information on other bookplates and copies of their own, when they had them. I hope this trend will continue, and I urge those of you who have a personal bookplate, or who have examples of scholar's bookplates in your own books or in books accessible to you will send them along for inclusion in this collection.

This is the very plain bookplate of the collection known as the Director's Library. Traditionally this was the collection housed in the Director's Study. The core of the Director's Library was the collection of James Henry Breasted (see the bookplate below). Much of the Director's Library was absorbed and integrated into the Research Archives in the early 1970's. Almost all of the remainder of it (with the exception of the Director's Study collection of publications of the Oriental Institute) was absorbed by the Research Archives during the directorship of William Sumner when the Study was renovated and restored.

This bookplate doesn't strictly speaking belong in this compilation, because no book in the Research Archives carries it. I guess this means I'll need to make a donation to become legitimate.

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Since the initial posting, I have had several interesting responses, both in the comments on the blog, and offline. The following bookplates have been brought to our attention by correspondents [February 28th 2008]:

The following set of bookplates was collected by Peter Pamminger and Kirsten Konrad, with whose very kind permission they appear here. They have been studying Egyptological bookplates for a number of years. They presented a talk on a small collection of 11 examples at the 2004 Egyptological meeting in Mainz. They are planning a 2009 exhibition at the Gutenberg Museum at Mainz.

7 comments:

Love the bookplates! I was discussing the modern version of these on my blog yesterday.

Anyway, I'm here to leave a link, not to my blog, but to a place that might interest your members here. A forum on Archeology and Ancient History. I go there to read the latest news articles. (Ancient news LOL)

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AWBG is a place for posts and discussion about blogging the Ancient World. Particularly welcome are entries announcing real world events where bloggers can meet, planning and notice of virtual blogfests - when a group of bloggers are posting about the same topic, and other issues related to how bloggers go about their business.

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